response 26 of 35:

Dec 1 17:49 UTC 1994

To fit indemnification insurance into what I said in #24: I said that
board members can't be sued by Grex members, because of the provision of
state law. But they can be sued by members of the public, and the law says
that Grex will indemnify them, if they are sued, and indemnification
insurance covers Grex for that contingency. However, the Umbrella
Insurance coverage does the same thing for board members carrying it. Very
wealthy people will generally not serve on high-profile non-profit boards
that are not fully insured, but Grex is not in that category. You know,
all this talk of insurance tends to make peopple anxious - but the fact
is, that the *risk* is almost nonexistent, as measured by the frequency of
successful suits. I am most familiar with liability insurance for land
trusts, which own lands and buildings: in 5 years the insurance company
that carried the insurance for some 600 land trusts dealt with 5 suits, on
2 of which they paid injured persons. Board members were never sued. Do
you know what hazard they were most concerned about? Foot bridges. 

response 28 of 35:

Dec 2 17:15 UTC 1994

Incidentally, those 600 trusts were paying ca. $500/a for insurance (the
minimum was about $250, but it depends upon acreage), so the insurance
company received 1.5 million over 5 years in premiums, and paid out ca.
$60,000 to claimants. Of course, they also ran their operation. *Everyone*
is very happy to pay their small pittance, to have that service available
if needed, and of course the insurance agents have the means to play gold. 

response 30 of 35:

Dec 2 20:55 UTC 1994

Isn't that what's played with the little platinum balls that you try to
hit into the little spode cups?

response 32 of 35:

Dec 3 07:58 UTC 1994

Wires are the foot bridges of computers. When they rot, people fall
through an break a leg....er...zap their bippies?

response 34 of 35:

Dec 29 14:31 UTC 1994

Fires are one definite concern.  We should also be at least somewhat
concerned about electrocution from improperly-wired equipment; but
probably a more likely source of trouble would be someone injured by
lifting part of Grex, or by having a table or shelf collapse and drop
part of Grex on him or her.

The insurers are likely to be worried about someone's sticking fingers or
tongues into any equipment that isn't really enclosed, but I'm not.  But
it seems to me pretty reasonable to expect us to be concerned that someone
may be hurt by an accident while helping work on the hardware.

Nonetheless, the premiums quoted earlier sound pretty high in terms of
the actual risk.  Most of the time no one will be working on the hardware
at all - I hope!